


Need You (When I Do)

by navaan



Category: DCU (Comics), Justice League Dark (Comics)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, F/M, Fate & Destiny, Magic, Mild Hurt/Comfort, On-Again/Off-Again Relationship, POV Female Characters, Rekindling Relationship, Rescue, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-15 06:17:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4596072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John walks away from the team and Zatanna thinks it's time to move on. But John Constantine wouldn't be himself if he wouldn't find trouble – and maybe Zatanna does care after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Need You (When I Do)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amathela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amathela/gifts).



“You're right! You're a loner, John. Then go, if that's what you are!” Zatanna shouted at Constantine's back. “ _I_ don't need you.”

John waved a hand at her over his shoulder, but didn't look back. It was anyone's guess where he was off to next. The Cold Flame was after him or manipulating him – or more likely he was trying to con them, which was the stupid kind of thing John Constantine would do. Xanadu had seen the different outcomes of at least some of that. Of course, she had also seen the futures, always in flux, always in movement, the fates moving, and John Constantine returning to them. The team – if that was indeed what their group of magical and mystic loners and misfits could be called – may be in agreement that they didn't need John Constantine to work or to face whatever came their way. She could see that Boston and Orchid and – at least at this very moment – even Zatanna were thinking they would be more than fine without John at the moment.

But she had seen it.

She knew they would need John once more at their side, sooner rather than later.

And he would need them too, even if he would tell himself that he didn't.

They were all touched by magic here, and if it came down to it they all had the same problem: Magic and the power it brought came at a price and every single one of them had payed it at one time or another. It wasn't like magic took away your choices, but sometimes it chose your path, more frequently when your connection to magic was deep.

She was sitting at her table, laying down her cards, when Zatanna stepped inside the chamber and proclaimed: “He's an idiot.”

There was no question about who she was talking about.

As she pulled another card from her deck the card of the Fool had taken on the picture of one John Constantine and a brief vision came with it. She sighed. “He is a fool obviously,” she agreed, feeling that Zatanna was looking for someone to gossip with to get over her own frustration. “He'll be back.”

“Not this time, he better not be. I'll throw him out on his ass again myself. He's playing with fire and he's going to be burned. Even his luck is going to run out and one of his schemes will come back to bite him.”

“Perhaps,” Xanadu agreed lightly, reluctant to talk about what could or could not be. She still hadn't put down the card. “He's following his own path.”

“He always is! Selfish bastard.” 

Zatanna sat down at the chair and folded her arms in front of her chest, a surly frown on her face. Their resident ghost friend wasn't the only one who had repeatedly asked how someone like John Constantine had ever managed to get into the affections of someone full of integrity and heart like Zatanna. Xanadu had wondered herself, remembering the man who had brought up a lovely strong daughter and knowing what Giovanni Zatanna must have thought about someone like John Constantine when he was still alive, about someone who hid his power not behind stage cantrips, but behind the rough exterior of the charming liar and dangerously amoral character. The magical community had many names for John, stretching from the simplest “criminal” to “man of mystery” to “lowlife conjurer” to even less favorable denominators. The smart people, the ones who had actually known John long enough to get a good look at the way he was dealing with magic – uncaring and dabbling on the surface, but a mage of natural power and considerable knowledge underneath – only called him “dangerous”. And that was all the name he needed for himself.

“I'm through with him once and for all,” Zatanna said and sighed. It sounded like a decision, but she was here and Madame Xanadu knew that there was the slightest hint of a question sounding inside the statement.

She was looking at the card and nodded. “It is up to you.” She saw a future world in shambles where Zatanna had turned John away forever. There was fire and brimstone, hellfire and demons on earth. She saw a future years down the road with Zatanna bouncing a black-haired little boy on her knees who had John's piercing eyes. She saw a world of magic, Ravenscar, a new Camelot, shaping the new Age of Magic with a laughing magician at its center. Stability and peace. She never got a good glimpse at it, could not even make out Zatanna's own fate in it, the stability by far the future that would be hardest to come by.

Zatanna huffed. “I never know. It feels like he walks back into my life like nothing happened after a while... and I don't know. It's stupid. I don't need him. It just happens.”

But although it was always hidden behind sarcastic remarks and his uncaring exterior, all of them had realized that John still felt something for Zatanna, something that sometimes compelled him to even seem like he cared. And if Zatanna was here, asking the unasked question she apparently _was_ asking, then Xanadu had a feeling that things weren't as clear cut and easily put aside as Zatanna was hoping. Very likely she knew it too.

That was how magic worked, paths crossing, separating and crossing again.

* * *

“Look, darling, magic is magical,” her father had said an laughed, still delighted at her new-found ability to use a simple charm. “You'll find that for people like us it's simple, it's part of our nature. That doesn't mean we don't have to work for it. Walking, for example, is in our nature too and still we need to learn how to do it first.”

She'd recently seen her bay cousin take his first wobbly steps and not getting far and this explanation made much sense to her. 

“Some magic will come to you, some won't, princess. It's all magic, all this one thing, but you'll find that every magician, every mage, will have their own little doorway into it. Everyone needs to find their own path, you see?” He snapped his finger and said; “Esor raeppa,” and a wonderful red rose appeared in his hand. He held it in front of her eyes so she could inspect it. 

She had thought then she knew what he was trying to tell her, but it had taken her years of walking her own path to understand the truth of it. Magic was simple, but it was also not.

What her father had failed to point out was that love was just like that.

That too she had found out for herself while walking her own path. She'd fallen in love with Nick, because he'd been charming, powerful, ready to take her at face value and teach her what her father had not been willing or able to teach her. The great Zatara had accepted it with a shrug, by then proud and sure that his daughter was his greatest creation. Nick had already had a name in magic circles and Zatanna could have chosen a worse lover to be a bit rebellious with. Love and magic had been easy for a short while then. In the naivety of youth she'd thought it would always remain that way.

And then John Constantine had walked into her life – their lives, wearing a shabby t-shirt with what she later learned was a band name on it, wearing a leather jacket and a cocky attitude like a suit of armor. He hadn't been able to take his eyes of her, although Nick had thrown his arm around her, making it clear they were a couple. 

Zee had been charmed, but it had taken her a little while longer to figure out how magical and complicated love could be.

She had to think of these early days, of the times the three of them had ended up in bed together after some run in with wild magic, after a summoning gone wrong, after a power high of perfect conjuring: touching, reaching into each other and reveling in the pleasure of shared magic and connection. Zatanna hadn't been looking for family, her father always there to catch her if she needed him, but her first little coven of her own had made her feel invincible – until Nick had pulled away and she and John had found that they were ready for a new path.

The memories were all running together when she picked up the little paper card that had appeared in the middle of the room. Xanadu was watching her with a frown, knowing, and Black Orchid cocked her head to the side, biting her lip in worry. “Is it cursed?” she asked.

Frank looked ready to strike.

Boston Brand appeared before her to look at her closely.

“It's from John,” she said in a low voice.

“What does Con Job want then?” Boston asked gruffly. “Trouble is my guess.”

She held up the card that read: “I need you, Zee.”

“His idea of a love letter?” the ghost asked.

But from the sturdy paper she could feel the magic run along her skin and tickle her fingers.

“It must have taken him power to conjure this and send it here.” Xanadu was still watching her with a worried frown, not saying anything, and Zee didn't want to know either. But she knew this was going to be her decision and whatever Xanadu knew or had seen it would be decided here, shaping a future.

She stared at the letters, looking like the scratchy scribbly lines of John's messy handwriting but edged into the paper not by hand, but by magic.

Whatever trouble he had gotten himself into this time, there was only one thing for her to do. The right thing.

* * *

She found John standing on a ledge, looking down into a fire pit. He was wearing jeans and nothing else, no shoes, no shirt, no necktie or coat. Somehow that was less strange than the jeans. It had been years since she'd seen him in worn jeans nearly everyday. There was blood on his back and running down his arm. A deep cut ran all along his shoulder and she could see runes painted on his skin; his tattoos were dark and thrumming with protective power, barely enough to keep him from crumbling under the continuous psychic attack.

The heat was unbearable, even here, even for her who wasn't really here, as she slowly edged closer, step by step.

“John,” she called and he didn't turn to look at her. “John!”

He looked at her slowly, a grim expression on his face. “You shouldn't be here, Zee. Not _you_. Not in hell.”

The expression on his face was tired, his eyes full of anguish that she – just for this moment – was going to blame on the red light shed by the fire reflecting from them. 

“It's not hell, John, you're dreaming.”

“Dreaming?” he asked.

“Trapped in a dream. They've trapped you in a circle. They're holding you here.”

“Dream?” he asked and shook his head. “No, I belong here.” There was no trace of anguish or even resignation in his voice this time, it was just a simple statement of fact to him. She'd forgotten how much guilt John was carrying beneath his brash and annoying exterior. It was easy to forget when he was lying to you through his teeth, smiling and pulling your leash around as he pleased.

Close up she could see the power seeping slowly from his body, the magic slowly flowing out of him to feed the circle and the Cold Flame mage that had trapped him in it. “Come with me, John,” she said and reached for his hand. “Time to go.” 

“Don't be silly, love, you don't need me. And you're not really here in any case. Otherwise you'd have brought me fags, ey?”

He wasn't even looking at her, but down into the pit with longing. When the last threads of magic gave out, would he fall? Would he decide to make the step forward on his own?

“Come with me,” she said. “You need to wake up.”

“Fitting,” he said as if he hadn't heard a word she had said. “Even in my nightmares I can't stop thinking of you. But you are better off staying far away from me. You know what happens to the people around me.”

“John?” she asked, trying to get him to look at her one more. 

He didn't turn.

She raised herself up a bit to kiss him on the cheek, but he still didn't turn, staring into the fire as if he'd forgotten she was there at all.

Decisively she pressed her hand into his and held on. “If you want to jump, you have to take me down with you,” she said and he finally turned to stare at her, turned enough for her to kiss him on the mouth. The first sliver of recognition entered his gaze.

“Zee?”

She grinned. “Emoc htiw em, nhoj. Ekaw pu.” She whispered it against his lips, putting all her power into the charm, imposing her will on reality with her backwards magic. “I deen ouy.”

The fire faded away; the stone walls fell beneath her feet; John's eyes went wide and finally everything fell away into white light. She opened her eyes back in the New York apartment where they'd found John. Her legs were still folded and she was sitting with a straight back as if meditating, beside the magic circle that had kept her back. Boston Brand who had come with her was looking at her critically. “Alright?” he asked as she blinked up at him. “I was about to swoop back to the others and ask X or someone to interfere. Frankie's outside taking care of the rest.”

“I'm alright,” she said and smiled, just as John groaned, curling to his side, a hand coming up to claw at his brow, smudging the salt and chalk that had made up the circle, all power of the enchantment gone now.

“He'll be okay?”

“He's John Constantine,” she said.

“Yeah, right,” Boston nodded. “Can't get more messed up than that.”

“Ta,” John said, finally looking at them, blood and salt sticking to his cheek and his hair.

A grin formed on her lips. And very slowly a answering smile formed on his.

* * *

Magic was simple.

Magic was complicated.

Love was magic. The simplest and most powerful kind.

They'd made love and held each other, not speaking, not making assurances or professing love. Tomorrow John would be John again and follow his path and she'd be Zatanna Zatara and do what she thought was right. Their paths would lead them forward and back here and wherever. Simple and complicated.

There was no wisdom in fighting it more than necessary, she thought, as her fingers softly traced the words “I deen ouy” into John's skin as he slept.


End file.
